Deborah Brandt brings up the idea of sponsors in her literature Sponsors of Literacy. She writes about how sponsors are one of the main reasons why people are able to acquire literacy. Brandt describes a sponsor as “any agents, local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach, model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold literacy—and gain advantage by it in some way” (556). Though Brandt says that it is “any” agent which is “local”, just how local can it be? Can a sponsor be yourself if no one else? Many of my in the literacy narratives from Rising Cairn have shown that there is no specific sponsor, but there are undertones that there is. Where could it be? In Expect the Unexpected by Hannah D, she writes about how her brother died and later used this story to write her college application essay. She passed in this essay for her English class and had only received a B-, but was able to come out on top and realize that you must do what makes you happy, something that you could be proud of. “In the end, I have may not got[ten] the best grade on my paper, but that did not matter. I was so proud of my paper, no acceptance letter or B minus was going to change that. I did everything I could to go above and beyond.” She may have struggled emotionally with writing her essay, but nowhere does it say that there was an outside source supporting her other than herself. She was able to do things for herself like Brandt describes in her definition of a sponsor. She was able to teach herself this lesson on literacy. She gained an advantage by discovering a part of herself and being able to look at literacy in a more positive light. Is it just that narratives such as these are simply missing some information that could point to a sponsor that was not included for the fact that they wanted it to seem like they accomplished things on their own? Or are people like Hannah their own sponsor?

Literacy acquisition, to some, may seem to be pretty easy at first. But really, depending on your background (race, gender, class, etc.) literacy acquisition may be much harder than someone may think. On pages 559 through 561 of Deborah Brandt’s Sponsors of Literacy, Brandt tells of two real-life people: Dora Lopez and Raymond Branch. Especially in their day and age, Dora, being a female Mexican American, had a much harder time with literacy acquisition than Raymond, a Caucasian male. In the literacy narrative Education, Daria writes about how growing up, her family really truly pushed her to get her education and become as well-rounded as she possibly could. Once she was old enough, her mother even made her write about what she had read. “My family put a lot of pressure on education because of my family history… many of my family members grew up in a time of segregation when education was not easily accessible.” All of this, much like Dora and her family, is because she comes from a family born and raised in segregation. She comes from a family of color, so as history can tell, her family has faced many struggles and hardships when it comes to receiving a good (if any) education. Raymond was able to acquire literacy with ease due to his upbringing and family background, but it was much harder for the families of Dora and Daria. Dora and Daria’s families both had very hard times acquiring literacy; from Dora’s brother not even knowing how to read or write in Spanish, to Daria’s family having a brick wall of segregation in the way of having an education, literacy acquisition can become very difficult based off of one’s background.

Your upbringing and background affect literacy acquisition very much. From one person to another, each person has had different experiences with achieving literacy and education. Gee writes about primary Discourses. These Discourses are what we acquire in our early years of life while we grow up at home. They also include your race and gender and overall background (7,8). These key factors can be what constitutes how someone is able to acquire literacy in life. In the literacy narrative Mother Knows Best, Sarah Robinson was always fascinated with reading mystery books as a child. Her favorite series was The Boxcar Children. She would read the books over and over again. But once she started to get older, her mother took away this book series. Sarah was very upset at first, but no matter how much she kicked and screamed, her mother replaced the old book series with new, more advanced readings. “Turns out, I really did end up liking Nancy Drew and her mysteries. I was able to connect to her unlike the Boxcar Children, as we were almost the same age, gender and both loved solving mysteries.” Sarah gave these books a chance and she ended up loving these new books more than before. So Sarah’s primary Discourse allowed her to achieve literacy quite easily with her mother greatly encouraging reading in her life. She even encouraged her to challenge herself, and to keep challenging herself, strengthening her literacy skills. Sarah is able to take what she has acquired from her childhood and apply it to her later life when it comes to furthering her literacy.

According to Alexander, the success story cultural narrative could be so popular because the success story is “what teachers want to see” (624). If this is true, then are there certain key points that are missing from these narratives that point out an obvious sponsor? Since so many students write about what they think their teacher wants to see, then maybe a lot of them also want their teacher to think of them as strong, that they could do it on their own. So they simply exaggerated the truth, conveying themselves as the “sponsor” of their own literacy narrative. In the literacy narrative Blank Screen, Meghan has to write her college essay and pass it in to her English teacher.  After handing it in, she had only received a C as a grade. She had struggled greatly with writing it in the beginning, but was able to overcome it and finally get the essay done. She worked hard on it herself. “The only time that I got the sense of reward from my writing was on my college essay…  It was that I realized that no matter how much advice you can get from even the most brilliant person in the world there is nothing more important than listening to yourself.” Meghan claims to have done the work by herself, and says that yourself is what matters. But is there more to the story like Alexander suggests? When writing the literacy narrative, Meghan could have deliberately left out some details in order for her  to seem like she was more progressive in her thinking and writing.